I believe the thinking is that the previous setup meant that most people there were the kind that would obsessively refresh windows in order to secure places. The lottery means there's no benefit to those possibly excessively enthused about the idea, and so the tone of the whole thing could be more balanced and professional.
They're going to have to be careful about hotel bookings though, since the announcement of winners will cause a surge.
> They're going to have to be careful about hotel bookings though, since the announcement of winners will cause a surge.
Is this no different to selling out in minutes though? Besides, hotels already know a) the dates of Google IO, and b) how many people are attending, so you'd imagine they'd already have priced that into their rates. Unless you're talking about the actual booking systems going offline, but that seems unlikely as lots of people will use aggregators (Expedia, Kayak, etc) at scale.
Perhaps the parent objects to hellbanning on principle, and is partaking in some small amount of civil disobedience to right a perceived wrong.
If a single post happened to result in my being hellbanned, I would surely hope someone would tell me so I didn't continue wasting my time trying to participate, only to have it sent into the void. I could instead use it as a signal to either move on, or do some self introspection about my actions which resulted in the ban in the first place.
IMHO the best way is to just announce that there's no giveaway this year. Not the best promotion for the event though.